Post 72 - Sore legs

On Monday this week, two days after the 10k race, my legs were still in pieces. Very sore and stiff. I could barely walk properly, and was really struggling with stairs, especially going down. Painful. I really did feel as if my legs might just give way from under me. Needless to say, there was no training done on Monday. There wasn’t much improvement by Tuesday, and Tuesday involved travelling to Italy with work… again. I took my fifth and sixth flights in the space of eight days. The trip out to Italy wasn’t fun – negotiating trains, crowds, airports, planes, taxis and plenty of stairs, all with a couple of bags in tow. It was a bit of a struggle.

Training in Italy wasn’t exactly tough because it involved running hot baths in my hotel room, and sitting in these hot baths for as long as possible. Followed by as much sleep as possible. I think the hot baths did help my legs. On Wednesday evening I managed an easy 30 minutes on the crappy hotel gym exercise bike, followed by a hot bath. By Thursday I was walking a bit more normally, so the journey back on Thursday evening wasn’t quite as challenging. If I trained specifically for fast 10k races, I wouldn’t have been so sore, but Ironman training is a bit different.

On Friday I after work I went swimming with my toys – my leg float, hand paddles and rubber band for tying my feet together. There wasn’t too much wrong with my arms, so I had quite a good swim session. Then I went shopping, got back to the house, ate, and got on the turbo. Single-leg drills. The tedium. But they have to be done, so I fired up the laptop. I’d recently been sent a link to a video/webinar on the psychology of pain and how best to deal with it when training and competing in endurance sports. I thought it sounded good, and maybe I’d learn something from it. With 60-70 minutes of single-leg drills ahead, I thought it would be a good video to watch.

The pictures below give some idea as to how useful it was…

I got through the whole 65 minutes of single-leg drills. I also somehow got through the whole 60 minutes of the pain webinar. Watching and listening to it was a bit painful in itself, and even if I didn’t learn much, I perhaps developed a slightly greater mental resilience…

After that, it was shower, cook, eat, talk and sleep. The talking was done with my housemate Steve, and the result of the talk was that we would be going out on the roads the following morning. Yes, on the roads, in the Kent countryside. What a novelty… But I’d be getting out of bed at 7:30am. On Saturday morning! Ugh. A slightly different kind of novelty, as I rarely surface before 10:30am on Saturdays.

If I’d had my really sensible and disciplined hat on, I wouldn’t have gone out on the bike with Steve. I’d have slept late, spun the pedals on the turbo trainer for an hour or two, kept it all nice and easy, and rested up, allowing any residual 10k fatigue left in my legs to dissipate. But I thought, “Feck it, my legs feel OK, I never get the chance to go out on the roads, I’m just going to go out and have fun and enjoy it…”

And so the alarm went off at 7:30am on Saturday morning. Urgh. I got my road bike ready. The poor thing hasn’t seen any action since the Alps trip in August last year, and has spent the intervening 7 months (time flies) chained to the wall of the garage. Poor thing! We would head out towards the Toys Hill/Ide Hill area, with a rough idea that we wouldn’t ride too hard until we got to the “north face” of Toys Hill, where we’d blitz the 2-3 mile climb as hard as possible. Later, we’d plug our Garmins into our computers and upload our rides to Strava. I was keen to see how my time going up Toys Hill would compare to the best times on Strava. After blitzing Toys Hill, we’d do a few more circuits out in the countryside, and head back. Total ride time would be just under 3 hours. It all sounded fair enough, and certainly not unmanageable.

So we headed off, Steve setting most of the pace. We were generally heading south, into quite a strong headwind. I took a turn at the front on the flatter parts before we got to the hills, and my heart rate was hitting 160-170. Far too high. I just wanted an easy ride! As we reached the hillier parts, the weather changed. It had been warm(ish) and dry on the roads heading out to the country. Towards the hills it was misty, damp, colder, and the roads were wet. Quite a big change in just a few miles. It’s cycling central out in the Kent hills. Armies of cyclists were out. Entire pelotons, soloists, small groups. So many people on bikes. Good to see. There was a time trial going on as well, so some nice bikes and aero helmets were on display. Back in Northern Ireland, if I’m out on the bike, I’d be lucky to see one or two other cyclists. Out in the Kent hills, there were hundreds.

Natural habitat

Natural habitats have this effect on facial expressions

We got to Toys Hill. I rode it pretty hard, peaking at 179bpm. It probably takes less than 10 minutes to climb and is only about two and a half miles long, but I must have overtaken 20 or so other cyclists on my ascent. Because we were climbing the north side of the hill, there was a southerly headwind. The second half of the climb was shrouded in mist, but I blasted the whole way up. Steve wasn’t too far behind. I felt that I’d done my bit for the day and informed Steve I wouldn’t be riding too hard for the rest of the ride. After a good few more miles out in the hills, and a second (much slower) ascent of Toys Hill, we headed for home. At least there would be a tailwind blowing us back.

A section of Toys Hill

Filling in the potholes and smoothing out the road would help...

By this stage my legs were absolutely knackered. Riding hard wouldn’t have been an option. Tailwind or not, I couldn’t keep up with Steve and he kept pulling out gaps on me, I couldn’t even hold his wheel. My heart rate was low, but my legs just didn’t have any energy. I had three energy gels in the final 45 minutes just to keep me going and get me home. I clearly wasn’t fully recovered from the 10k. I was very thankful when we got back. There was no chance I was following the ride with a run, as I usually would on Saturdays. The rest of the weekend was spent sitting on the sofa, resting, relaxing and eating. Apart from the cold shower treatment I gave my legs to try to speed their recovery. Not fun!

We uploaded our rides to Strava. We were both surprised to see that my time up Toys Hill was actually quite slow. Although I had blasted up almost as hard as possible, the conditions had conspired against a fast time. It had been damp, misty and chilly, and there had been a headwind. I didn’t feel that my tired legs had slowed me down too much, but with hindsight, I was nowhere near being in good condition. It just goes to show how much the weather conditions can affect a fast time, and how important it is to be well rested.

We also watched the Gent-Wevelgem one-day cycling classic taking place in Belgium. They were experiencing the same weather system we had endured on our Kent ride, except it seemed far worse in Belgium than in Kent. It was obscene. Really strong winds and wet, narrow, exposed, debris-strewn roads were causing chaos. Riders could barely stay on their bikes. In all my years watching cycling, I have never seen the like. It was a day that winner Luca Paolini will remember for all the right reasons, but a day that everyone else will remember for all the wrong reasons. The images below hardly do it justice... cyclists are tough cookies...

 

Carnage in Belgium, all in a day's work

Training done this week was as follows:

Mon 23 March: Rest
Tue 24 March: Rest
Wed 25 March: 30 minute exercise bike
Thu 26 March: Rest
Fri 27 March: Swim 3.3km, 65 minute turbo (single leg drills, 10 x 2mins R/L/B)
Sat 28 March: 2:30 bike
Sun 29 March: 30 minute run

Totals: Swim 3.3km, Bike 70 miles, Run 5 miles.